Television| Television Review | 'My Life as Liz' and 'The Buried Life'

Youthful Reality, MTV-style

MTV and VH1 have a formula: VH1 gets the C-list celebrities; MTV gets the anonymous teenagers and 20-somethings who aspire to be C-list celebrities.

“My Life as Liz,” Monday nights on MTV, breaks down the categories somewhat. Billed as the video diary of Liz Lee, a high school senior in Burleson, Tex., it registers more as a sitcom than a reality show — it’s so stylized and carefully planned and post-produced, it’s the next best thing to scripted, if it isn’t in fact a wholly scripted put-on. And that’s the point. Ms. Lee and her producers have done an end run around teenage anonymity and preshaped her as Burleson’s — and soon, they hope, the world’s — own readymade C-list celebrity.

The premise is that Ms. Lee, formerly a blond Texas android, has gotten real (pink hair, baggy clothes, watches the original “Night of the Living Dead” on her laptop) and is ready to expose the vapidness and insularity of Burleson and its denizens. Early on, this mainly involves documenting her love-hate relationship with the school’s mean girls, who, it’s clear, happily participated in their own demonization. It’s as if the geeky misfit viewer who hates all those blond women on “The Hills” were suddenly part of the show, the sneer made visible.

This set-up places a huge burden on Ms. Lee, who narrates and appears in just about every frame, and while she’s engaging, she doesn’t make her life or her opinions seem interesting enough to draw you in. “My Life as Liz” requires her to be an entertainer rather than just a personality or a camera subject, and she’s not there yet.

Photo

Liz Lee from “My Life As Liz,” a teen reality series airing on Mondays on MTV.Credit
Rene Cervantes/MTV

Some of the other characters in her life make more of an impression, particularly the male friend who looks a little like Jack Black and says, when Liz tries to get him to put on a costume and make-up, “Glitter is the herpes of arts and crafts.” He needs more screen time.

Also appearing on Monday nights on MTV is “The Buried Life,” which takes a manufactured concept — the bucket list of things to do before you die — and adds another layer of fakery by having the list makers be four overly caffeinated guys in their 20s. There’s also an overlay of charity, with items like “Give a stranger a $100 bill” and “Pay for someone’s groceries.”

Whatever you think of the idea or the list itself — and is “Scream at the top of your lungs” something you really need to write down? — the main problem is that the show’s excruciatingly dull. The bland foursome don’t have much to say, other than exclaiming (“Are you kidding me?” “Oh my God!”) over every amazing thing they see and do. One task is to crash a party at the Playboy Mansion, which is redundant given that the bucket listers have a disturbing habit of taking off their own clothes at the slightest provocation.

At one point the four are on the sidewalk busking to raise money so they can buy a computer for a fifth-grade class — don’t ask — and one says, “Guys, we’ve got to make this feel like a real show or it’s not going to work.” It’s unclear whether we’re supposed to laugh. “The Buried Life” is basically “Jackass” for do-gooders, but it’s not nearly as fun. Steve-O and Bam would have these guys for breakfast.